Kentucky Wildcats Football: Bluegrass State of Mind

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With this week’s offer to Paintsville ATH Kash Daniel, the Kentucky Wildcats Football team is prepared to take another stellar haul from the Bluegrass state this year. After much disdain has been expressed about Kentucky’s home recruiting base, it has produced a bounty of talent recently. Nearly half of the team’s starters are h0megrown talents. Names like Towles, Barker, Timmons, Elam and Middleton will shape the future of this program.

The 2016 class looks like it will have quite an impact of it’s own. Drake Jackson and Landon Young are both talented enough to be national recruits. Cornerback Davonte Robinson is on the verge of being a highly sought after commodity. ATH Zyaire Hughes is another Timmons-like talent. Among the possible additions Daniel has all of the tools to be a star at middle linebacker in Lexington. Keion Wakefield would be an excellent slot receiver prospect. Former UK commit and legacy Quinton Baker won’t be a part of the class unless there is a defection among the current running back commits. A number of other Kentucky prospects are good enough to play FBS football and would have had scholarship offers before the recruiting bar was raised under Stoops.

If you have read this space much at all, then you know how I feel about the necessity for a program like Kentucky to build on homegrown talent. For a program with little history and an uphill climb you need players who are passionate. Not just passionate about football or succeeding athletically, but players who love that Kentucky across their chest more than anything in the world. It’s something very rare to develop with a guy from Florida, Georgia, Ohio, etc. but not unheard of, Randall Cobb certainly had it. Bud Dupree has it.

But the best Kentucky teams have always been led by great Kentuckian players. The best example being the Woodson/Burton/Tamme offense that took the program to the Top 10. What folks forget is that that team had a strong Kentucky offensive line. They also had Corey Peters and Myron Pryor on the defensive line and defensive backs Marcus McClinton and David Jones. And who could forget Micah Johnson.

It is true that UK cannot survive in the SEC on purely Kentucky recruits but they can succeed with a heavy dose. And it looks like they are doing it again. If they take the cream of the crop in-state and supplement it with Florida speed and Ohio strength, the future is very bright.

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